TO celebrate the Year of Young People, every week in 2018 The National is giving a platform to young Scots. This week, St Margaret’s High School pupil Ellie Wallace.

IN May I visited Malawi. It was my first time travelling to a third-world country and I had a mix of emotions about going.

It was a really daunting experience and I felt excited, nervous and scared. I had an image in my mind of what I thought Malawi was going to be like, but once I arrived it was far worse.

It was very deprived with extreme poverty, and young children were abandoned with nowhere to go. This had a really big emotional impact on me as I realised how lucky I am to be brought up with a loving family and friends. I had spoken to a few girls who had been in previous years and they had warned me it was going to be an emotionally challenging experience.

I went to Malawi with my school, St Margaret’s in Airdrie. These trips have become a tradition. My school, and in particular English teacher Andy McKay, does so much for Malawi. In the past the school has set up a female farming village, provided supplies and training to schools, set up an orphanage, set up schools in juvenile prisons, built a nursery, funded camps for disabled people, had more 50 prisoners released, fed female and child prisoners every Christmas, Easter and summer, provided and installed complete house solar kits, sponsored a prison football team (Chichiri Celtic), built a science lab for our partner school (Chisitu CDSS), sponsored various individual families (healthcare and education) and hosted an orphans’ party every year, distributed various health and educational resources and started working with Mission Rabies among many other things.

When in Malawi we visited disabled camps, which was a really hard and emotional day, particularly spending time with the children. I formed a relationship with a young seven-year-old girl who was unable to walk or talk and was also partially blind. My relationship with her is something I will cherish forever and hope to see her next year when I visit.

We also spent time in primary and secondary schools, youth and female prisons – including high-security prisons. I was really nervous to go to the prisons, not because of the prisoners, but because I knew how violent and aggressive the guards were. It was really intimidating seeing them with machine guns and big batons. I was terrified. Knowing that many of these prisoners are wrongly accused, I felt deep sympathy for them.

Going to the schools was such a shocking experience. I was in disbelief at the number of children crammed into a dark, dirty classroom. There was little light in the classes and almost no materials. In comparison to my school where we have a variety of pens, jotters, books, computers etc, these schools don’t even have a bit of paper to write on. The students were expected to memorise the teachings, which I imagine to be really tough, especially when coming up to exams.

For me, it was the most eye-opening and rewarding trip I have ever been on. I am returning to Malawi next June and I’m so excited to see everyone again. I didn’t realise how much I was going to miss all the people that I met. It is an experience I will never forget.